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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: Monday, July 13, 1863

The Enquirer says the President has got a letter from
Gen. Lee (why not give it to the people?) stating that his operations in
Pennsylvania and Maryland have been successful and satisfactory, and that we
have now some 15,000 to 18,000 prisoners, besides the 4000 or 5000 paroled.
Nonsense!

Lee and Meade have been facing each other two or three days,
drawn up in battle array, and a decisive battle may have occurred ere this. The
wires have been cut between Martinsburg and Hagerstown.

Not another word have we from either Charleston or Jackson;
but we learn that monitors, gun-boats, and transports are coming up the James
River.

Altogether, this is another dark day in our history. It has
been officially ascertained that Pemberton surrendered, with Vicksburg, 22,000
men! He has lost, during the year, not less than 40,000! And Lovell (another
Northern general) lost Fort Jackson and New Orleans. When will the
government put “none but Southerners on guard?”

Letters to-day from the Governors of South Carolina,
Alabama, and North Carolina show that all are offended at the Confederate
government. Judge Campbell's judicial profundity (and he is the department's
correspondent) is unfortunate at this crisis, when, not great principles, but
quick and successful fighting, alone can serve.

It appears that President Lincoln has made a speech in
Washington in exultation over the fall of Vicksburg, and the defeat of an army
contending against the principle that all men were created equal. He means the
negro — we mean that white men were created equal — that we are equal to
Northern white people, and have a right, which we do not deny to them, of living
under a government of our own choice.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 377-8